A PhD student at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the ANU, Ms Eyles is studying the relationship between urban dwellers and their environment.

Much of her spare time is spent in the bush. A volunteer for a decade helping look after Mount Taylor nature reserve, and now with Friends of Mulligans Flat, Ms Eyles is as interested in the people she encounters outdoors as plants and animals.

''I think it is a bit of an indictment more dogs use the nature reserves than children. People are getting their own exercise and walking their dogs, but the kids are probably at home on the computer,'' Ms Eyles said during a break from planting trees on Sunday morning.

"On Mount Taylor for instance, you will see some kids out with their families, but you will see more adults walking dogs than kids on their own, on their bikes.''

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On Sunday she was among volunteers with Greening Australia restoring woodlands in the Molonglo Valley.

Overlooking the Molonglo River, the woodlands face the new suburbs of Wright and Coombs, from where volunteers came to help plant native flora including red leaf wattle and yellow box-gum.

ACT Parks and Conservation and the Land Development Agency, which is funding Ms Eyles' scholarship, organised Sunday's planting, which will be complemented by salvaged logs to shelter local wildlife including woodland birds.

Ms Eyles says children are becoming disconnected with the bush, and do not appreciate it as much as previous generations. She suspects ACT park rangers acquired their appreciation of nature while growing up building cubby houses in the bush and collecting lizards.

Today children are so restricted they rarely wander into the bush alone.

"Kids seem to do a lot more activities after school these days,'' she said.

''They don't walk to school as much these days. We seem to have special activities to encourage kids that you and I would have considered normal when growing up - walk safely to school day, play outside day - whereas those things were part of your everyday life when you were a child 20, 30 years ago.

Ms Eyles said concerns about safety had restricted children, even though statistics showed they were in no more danger than a generation ago in the bush, and probably more at risk from traffic.

"But with busy families working to pay off mortgages and that sort of stuff, we are going to have to look at a different range of activities to try and get people interested.''